“Yes, the babies die”: Tales of despair and dismay from Venezuela
To get a sense of how fast and how far Venezuela has fallen, look no further than the University Hospital of Maracaibo. Once a shining beacon of the South American nation’s oil-rich economy this modernist building that once pioneered liver transplants now peels intro disrepair and lacks electricity, water, even basic medicines. The shelves lie empty, coated with flies, and outside a large mound of blue rubbish bags grows, rotting by the day. “Hospitals have become like extermination camps,” says surgeon and professor Dr. Dora Colomenares. Our weekend read is the latest instalment of Susan Schulman’s special report on the humanitarian impacts of Venezuela’s economic collapse. Through the graphic accounts of patients and doctors, it lays bare the collapse of a healthcare system that has now lost most of its capability to treat the sick. As medical personnel join the mass exodus from the country, malnutrition is weakening immune systems and long-dormant diseases are returning. “We feel very helpless because there is nothing we can do,” Colomenares says. “Yes,” she nods, “yes, the babies die.”

Activist Nour al-Kaswani told the Al-Hal website that the Herjalleh shelter center “has become known for the corruption of those in charge. They deprive displaced people of their shares of food and do not deliver aid despite it having arrived months earlier, on the pretext of arranging the lists and organizing work.”

Kaswani added that those responsible for distribution in these institutions “extort civilians, especially women, trying to receive sexual favors from them in exchange for the easing of the delivery of aid. This was confirmed by a number of women in the center.”

GOAL A former logistics officer with an Irish NGO has been banned from doing business with the US government for 10 years for his key role in a corruption ring that sought to pocket a slice of Syrian aid budgets.

The US government has reinforced counter-terrorism controls on aid operations in Syria. New contractual terms require US-funded organisations to get special permission to provide relief in areas controlled by extremist groups. The move further complicates aid operations for those trapped in Syria’s last rebel stronghold, Idlib, where two thirds of its three million people need assistance.

The Irish NGO GOAL has suspended food voucher distributions in Syria’s troubled Idlib region since February as donor concerns widen about delivering aid in areas controlled by extremist groups. A GOAL spokesperson confirmed it had “paused” the initiative but did not offer details of the move, which has not been previously reported.

Around two weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu privately conveyed a message to the White House stressing that Israel's position regarding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has changed — and that it now supports a complete cut of all U.S. funding to the agency, which gives aid to Palestinian refugees, Israeli officials told me. The officials added Netanyahu communicated with the Trump administration without consulting Israel's security chiefs.

Funding to support the operations of the Free Syria police force is set to come to an end in September, with government sources conceding the Access to Justice and Community Service (Ajacs) programme had become too difficult to deliver.

The government said the scheme had been kept under review because of the high risk, difficult conflict environment to ensure the benefits justified the risks, acknowledging the scheme had become too difficult to deliver as the balance between potential gain and risk shifted.

It said over recent months that the situation on the ground in those regions had become more difficult.

Given that these funding gaps have existed since 2012, it should come as no surprise that there has been little marked improvement in the socioeconomic conditions of refugees, despite years of aid. In a 2018 update to the UNHCR’s refugee response plan for 2017 to 2020, the agency stated that more than 76 percent of Syrian refugees live below the poverty line, set at $3.84 per day. A whopping 87 percent of them are in debt, with the average debt amounting to $798 per person. Syrian refugees incur significant costs—for example, 18 percent of average monthly expenditure goes toward paying rent, often for overcrowded housing. Meanwhile, food is the largest monthly expenditure, at 44 percent, and accounts for the greatest proportion of debt.